On June 8, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was officially nominated for a second term by the National Union Party at their convention in Baltimore. Amidst the bloody, exhausting depths of the American Civil War, the party chose to stick with Lincoln’s leadership rather than risk a drastic political shift.
Responding to a delegation the very next day, Lincoln humbly downplayed his personal popularity by deploying a piece of classic frontier wit. He told them the story of an old Dutch farmer who sagely remarked that “it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.” The simple, brilliant phrase instantly captivated the public imagination, transforming an old farm idiom into one of the most enduring political campaign slogans in American history.
